CNN Moneycarried an interesting story on Monday entitled "Apple is now the most valuable company of all time". Similar headlines soon abounded.

Indeed Apple, Inc. (AAPL), despite a "bad" quarter which would be cause for celebration for just about anyone else, has soared in value over the last decade with the success of the iPod, then the iPhone, and most recently the iPad. From 2000 to present, shares increased from a market cap of $8B USD to $623B USD. For comparison's sake gold -- typically consider a massive commodities success story -- has only ballooned from $238 USD per oz. to $1640 USD per oz. at last count.

So when Apple's soaring stock set a market capitalization record of $623B USD (at $665.15 USD/share) -- more than the $618.9B USD Microsoft was worth (according to investors) in Dec. 30 at the height of so-called "dot com bubble".

But for all the streamers and confetti, the claim that Apple is the "most valuable of all time/in all of history" isn’t accurate. Value is based on the worth of the currency at the time.

"Siri, who is the most valuable company in all of history?" Ding ding.. "In today's dollars Microsoft in 1999 would be." [Image Source: AP Photo]

In 2010 dollars, Microsoft's $618B USD valuation would be over $820B USD. While inflation data is still being finalized for last year, it would likely be somewhere in the ballpark of $850B USD in today's money (The Columbia Journalism Reviewsays $856B USD in today's money, although it admits to goofing by saying that International Business Machines, Inc. (IBM) in 1967 was the most valuable, failing to realize that the data it was working off of was already adjusted).

The headlines are particularly troubling, given that even a simple Wikipediasearch would have revealed the truth (Wikipedia pegs Microsoft's peak value at $846B USD in today's money).

In other words, Apple still has to grow by another third in order to truly become the most valuable of all time.

Still, it is fair to lavish Apple with some praise. The company was most profitable tech firm for 2011 and third in total profits. For 2012 Apple is expected to be the most profitable American firm.

Those profits could soar even higher if Apple succeeds in its court bid to ban rival Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd.'s (KSC:005930) devices from the American market -- the world's most lucrative and second largest smartphone market.

But Apple has a long hard road ahead to become truly the biggest company in history. For now, it is merely in a small crowd of historic elites.

I don't know why people don't understand this but market capitalization is the value of the company's equity, it DOES NOT INCLUDE DEBT.

Walmart and Exxon have LOTS of debt and their total assets are MUCH larger than Apple.

Again, a company could be GIANT but it could also OWE alot of money, so the debt is very high and there is no equity. But SOMEBODY (the creditors to the company) do indeed own much value in the company in the form of debt.

The key here is that Apple has very little debt while Exxon has lots of debt.

Therefore, the most important measure is ENTERPRISE VALUE, not market cap.

quote: Again, a company could be GIANT but it could also OWE alot of money, so the debt is very high and there is no equity. But SOMEBODY (the creditors to the company) do indeed own much value in the company in the form of debt.

Then why do people refer to the US economy as being the world's largest? If they rate government economies the same way they rate company economies, then the US would have one of the world's smallest since we have so much debt.

We measure country economic size by how much it produces in one year. by analogy for companies that would be its "profit", there are many ways to define and account for profit... but by that measure exxon is the biggest every single motherf****** year.

the reason apple's equity is worth more be because people expect apple to grow more than exxon in the future, and also because exxon has far more debt ,,

again, debt is only negative value for the EQUITY holder, debt itself is very valuable of course, wouldn't you like to own all the debt a company has outstanding ? that's a lot of money.

so for the us economy, the lenders and equity owners of all the companies in the economy together hold the value of the economy, which is indeed the largest,